thank you!

a quick note before noah and i head to the w/h - the kits have all been spoken for! thank you so much! it means a lot to me personally! i will email you each personally this weekend when i get my head above water again and get them together in a box to ship (there might be one or 2 of you who didn't get one, i need to do a final count)

and oh yeah, here is a link to MAKE YOUR MR LIFE MORE FUN AND EASY!

http://www.mayaroad.com/classes/ClassMaterials.htm

don't develop your own templates, and make some cool gifts for the upcoming holiday season. this is our gift to you and the BEST thing is - IT IS ALL FREE!

back from scrapfest...

well, i had a BLAST at scrapfest - meet up with some really nice ladies that i often chat with online but have not gotten to meet in person.

some of my highlights include:

1. getting to sport my touque (aka winter hat) and wicked socks
2. teaching 3 fab classes with such nice ladies
3. meeting other teachers from all over north america
4. seeing my friend melissa
5. coming home to see my baby and david

i truly enjoyed teaching each of my classes. i will admit now that i was a bit nervous before the whole thing with teaching. to be honest i had not taught before in this type of setting but when i got to my classes, i LOVED it! it really reminded me that when i was in high school, i was trying to decide between teaching and engineering (At the time the dollar $ign$ won out - LOL). i hope that everyone in my classes came away with lots of ideas that they can apply to other projects!

here is one of the classes i taught:

as i was cleaning out my luggage today, i realized that i have about 6-8 of these class kits left to create this project. and i am going to offer them up here. i want to do this b/c i want the proceeds of the kits to go to a good cause - samaritan's purse (http://www.samaritanspurse.org/) - so for every kit that we sell - 100% of the cost of what we are charging (minus the shipping) will go in the form of a cash donation to this organization. deb, david, david and i (and the babies too) support this organization every year and this is a great way for us to raise some more funds for them. so i am estimating if we can sell these kits, we can raise $150 ($25 /kit minus about $5.00 for shipping/kit = $20 / kit to donate * 8 kits = $160)

so with that, you will get for $25 (which includes s/h in the US) the following:

1. a tin of maya road bottlecaps

2. a b/w handout copies of my instructions for putting this together

3. all the papers in the project

4. a MR keychain (which you can use for another project)

5. 2-3 MR wire flowers

6. 3 large chipboard MR blossoms (varied - might be different than the one in the pic)

7. 4-6 small chipboard MR blossoms

8. a MR swirl stamp

9. MR ribbon

10. a vintage bottlecap (that i bought on ebay)

11. a pkg of adhesive (will vary with what i have left from the kits)

12. a paper template for the background and the bottlecaps (makes for easier cutting).

13. 4-6 med MR blossom chipboards

and as always, i will try to throw in some other goodies in there that we have around.

if you are interested in this kit, please email me at info@mayaroad.com - i can only take paypal for this kit and if you get it, there are no refunds.

thanks again to everyone at scrapfest. i had an awesome time!

people

well noah and david and i spent some quality time together tonight since i leave in the morning for scrapfest in edmonton. i can't believe my baby will be 4 months old soon! we think he is starting to teeth - grumpiness, drooling, a bit of a fever and some small bumps on his gums point to signs of teething. sigh, he is growing up so fast.

i was looking at these pictures tonight and thinking about the fact that noah has double eyelids while i have single eyelids. in fact, we saw a chinese family the other night and they said "noah has the coveted double eyelids" - the only way i can explain it is that i have the very typical asian eyelids - with a single fold. this makes eye makeup and stuff look like crap on me. noah has the "coveted" double eyelids which means an extra fold and also some other things...

here is the funny thing, in asia, you can get surgery to get the fold in your eyelid so you look more "western". that is a big deal in that culture for some. also in my wedding photos taken in hong kong, they actually TAPED ME SOME DOUBLE EYELID FOLDS! LOL! david didn't recognize me after they spackled on the makeup and taped my lids.

all of that made me think about why we can't accept beauty in people for who they are - why do we want to look western? i can remember growing up someone who was close to me (and was also chinese) told me "well you are pretty for an asian girl but you will never look as good as the white girls- b/c you will be plain" - gee what a blow to a 10 year old's self esteem. that is something i can laugh about now and roll my eyes at but at that time, it was so important to fit in and to hear that from someone i respected really made for some hard times growing up. and frankly that really hurt at the time. that is something i will remember for the rest of my life even though i am past it now.

NO WONDER i didn't smile in pictures for about 15 years. but all of that doesn't matter now. these are things i can laugh about. and what doesn't kill you makes you stronger. it took me a while to accept what i looked like - single eyelids and all but i am here and as you can see in the pictures, so very happy. i could go through life struggling with my single eyelids but life is too short (and i am too fiery to do so).

have a great weekend!

what we did this weekend.

so we got our rubons and with the amount of orders we have been having, j and noah were helping out (and me and david too) with getting the stuff all collated and put into tins. the warehouse is swamped with things to do with all the containers coming in and orders coming out so we had ourselves a little party to get some rubons together faster.

noah is just all about the supervising though - LOL. making sure we collate correctly and get the rubons in the tin correctly. he will make a great manager one day (though i would suggest to him to get some pants on!)

see this is the reality of our small business, in a pinch EVERYONE pitches in. big and small. and we are doing the best we can every day. we make do with what we have.

but we LOVE it or we would not be doing this. i can't say i love every moment of my job - but then again who does? but i love so many more moments than not. to be able to say that is a great thing.

to celebrate, we are going to be RAKing this month. the RAK fairy (aka J) will have some pkgs put together of MR stuff - the pkgs could include some rubons, ribbons, acrylics, stamps and chipboard. this RAK also has a twist to it and here is how it works:

the MR team does look at lots of different online galleries (big and small) and what we are going to do this next month is to search galleries of ppl that have Maya Road products used and you put *Maya Road* in the title of your project, LO, etc.

we love to see ppl use our stuff and often times i will go into galleries myself and offer praise when i do a gallery search for Maya Road stuff. so we will randomly email or PM ppl that do use MR stuff and also put *Maya Road* as a title of the project / layout (that is really the only way we can search galleries) this is our way of saying thank you for using our stuff!

so get crackin'. what better reason to use MR stuff than to get more MR stuff? LOL!

l

what is your inspiration?

yes, people, it is sunday evening and i am working - with scrapfest coming up, a container arriving and getting the rub-ons ready, my weekends are filled with moments of work. i just do not like to be unprepared for things. tonight i was out buying glue guns and big bad rubber mallets for my classes next weekend. i am sure the x-ray people at the airport are going to wonder why i have 7 rubber mallets in my bag of clothing but i will cross that bridge when i get to it!!!

this will be my first weekend away from this little dude:

...and it is hard to explain but i am both ready and a bit sad. he is almost 4 months already and such a charmer (check out his georgia tech polo shirt BTW). i don't know how to explain my mix of emotions of not seeing his face for 4 days and also being able to get away to refresh myself for 4 days - will he miss me as much as i miss him? will he and my DH be surrounded by fast food wrappers when i get home ? (LOL) but i will be thinking of both of them - in 2 of my classes, my subject is the two boys so they will be close to me in my heart.

i wanted to make sure that i had a chance to answer some questions that had been posted in a couple of blog comments before i forgot! there are some that are from a couple of weeks back but i hope that i answer everything here:

1. why don't we make stuff in the US? this was asked a couple of posts ago when i was talking about our crazy container scheduling -

• well i am happy to say that we do make some things in the US - our rub-ons and fibers. one reason is b/c the quality of these totally are so important to me in terms of how they are applied and we wanted to find the best maker out there and based on my research, for rub-ons the best is a US factory to make our stuff. also though, some of our things are packaged in the US - ribbons, fibers and such. cost is a factor in the scheme of things for what we can offer and while the turn around time might be slightly faster, there is still a long lead time for some things made in the states.

2. when do our rub-ons come out?

• well i can tell you - soon, grasshopper, soon. we will probably begin shipping out rub-ons in the next week or so (or that is the goal) but b/c we are offering what we are offering (9 sheets, 1 tin, 1000 images) - all that packaging has to be done here in the US and honestly, i personally will be doing some of that. see that is one of the joys (and sorrows) of small business. i get to do those things myself sometimes. PST- the slides will be out in about 2 weeks too!

3. when will i post my projects on scrapologie?

• i just did last night! you can go to the scrapologie gallery and see my stuff here: http://www.scrapologie.com/gallery/index.php - my user name is what i always use for all the online sites i am on - txrunner

4. where do i personally teach classes?

• all you have to do is ask me! LOL! i will only at this point be teaching 2x this year in canada. but in the future, i do plan on doing some other teaching gigs (look out australia - you might see me and deb there next year (wink wink) ) - right now, i am limiting the amount i teach b/c i am so much in the day to day in the business and baby noah is still, well a baby. but if there are any retailers who would like to have me come and teach and talk about maya road, let me know. you might not be able to get me to SHUT UP about our stuff - LOL! - i am by no means the best teacher in the world and you won't see me jumping on tables but i know my maya road stuff. i know how to use it in 10 different ways and make each look different. i know why we make what we make. i want to teach others to see maya road products in the ways i can see them - with new eyes and limitless possibilities.

5. why do we not sell our stuff directly to the consumer?

• well to be honest one reason is that i like to get some sleep (LOL) - and that would be an enormous amount of work for us at this point. the warehouse cannot handle it. also, we want to be good at what we do which is trying to serve our retailers rather than compete with them - b/c that is what we see it as. yes, it would be great to to get all our goodies in one place for the end consumer but we think it is important to support those LSS (big and small) that carry our stuff.

OK, that is all i have for tonight. my parting thought for you tonight is to jot down what it is that inpires you and create something about that. oh yeah, i am about 30 pages into my 100 page LO challenge (my DH is watching my shopping like a hawk!)

questions...

so i step out of my home office to check on the squawking in the living room and i come upon this:

my sweet baby all pooped out asleep on his daddy in a very seemingly uncomfortable position! LOL - hey when he has to sleep he has to sleep! i can't believe he is almost 4 months old! wow how time is flying!!!

i wanted to thank everyone who participated in my blog RAK - the box is (as they would say in west texas - "lip lappin' full" of MR stuff) and the winner is the poster by the poster name of nicole! congrats! you won the RAK - email me at info@mayaroad.com with your snail mail and i will get your goodies right out!

and thanks for letting me know what you all were interested in learning more about for our products. so to give you a taste of what you can do with some of our stuff (bottlecaps in particular) - have you thought about doing some cute pens with them like this:

this is one of the cool pen toppers i am making with this month's scrapologie kit - if you want to see more of what i do, i will have more things up this weekend at the scrapologie website. but for now, all you have to do to make this is to flatten a bottlecap, add some chipboard and bling and cover a pen with ribbon - you are DONE! think about a whole bouquet of these beauties! i used our new inspiration ribbons, some Blossoms II chipboard and some beautiful glitter chipboard flowers from the Scrapologie kit. i made 2 more of these babies to show off ranjini's fab kit.

i have more things done with our bottlecaps as i am preparing for my bottlecaps class at scrapfest in edmonton next week but i will wait til my class is done to show you those goodies! i am *so* excited to be going up to canada and to share with people what MR is all about and what you can do with our MR stuff. i have met so many awesome people online and can't wait to meet you all in person!

but for now it is back to the grind stone but i don't mind it at all, well on most days (except when people freak out b/c our container arrival is behind schedule - LOL).

eight...

eight is considered a lucky number in chinese culture b/c the sound of how eight is pronouced sounds a lot like the sound for prosperity. it is rumored that people in hong kong and china will pay big buckaroos to get a license plate that says "88888" all across. and on the other hand four is a not so lucky number because it sounds a lot like the sound for death.

well, i have to say that eight is a lucky number for me today. see, it was eight years ago today that david and i started dating. i do have some pictures of us from back then but i was a film gal then and my scanner sucks so this picture from the early 2000s will have to do:

man we do look younger - funny how a couple of years and a tiny baby named noah can change you - LOL!

but ah to the story of how david and i started dating. there is a long story behind this day september 12, 1998 that i won't get into at this time (but it did include david standing me up for a run - and that in itself is another story which i will make him pay for the rest of his life) .

i can still remember it vividly like it was yesterday - we had gone out with a bunch of our friends to celebrate our friend's (Kim's) birthday (who is ironically my friend that watches noah now) - and being that we lived in a SMALL population-less-than-20,000-people town in west texas, we had gone to the big city of amarillo to celebrate.

we had mexican food and then it was off to this country / western bar for karaoke. well only about 4 of us were brave enough to get up on stage in front of like 200 cowboys and their dates and we sang "LOVE SHACK" by the B-52s. david was the only guy singing, and well by then i pretty much knew i liked him (hey if you can sing "love shack, yeah baby LOVE shack" really loud and off key in front of 200 strangers like david did, then that is pretty cool in my book)

i had known for a while that i had a crush on david and i suspected that he liked me too. i wasn't 100% sure at that time and since we worked together, i was worried that if things didn't work out with us, it could have been a messy situation.

but in the end of the night, i had waited long enough - i had to make my move on david - i reached out for his hand in his 98 honda accord and later that night i planted a big kiss on his lips ( hey, i am not the shy type and i go after what i want).

wow, eight years has flown by! we have had our ups and downs but it has been one of the best times of my life. love isn't easy and it is a choice we make each day. i can't imagine my life with anyone else now.

so here is to eight great years, hon. love you.

blogging...

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i totally love this random shot taken during noah's shin dig in new mexico. a totally non posed shot that captures noah and his daddy enjoying a cool summer day. this picture got me thinking about the act of blogging.

you know when i first hear about this, i rolled my eyes at the idea of the blog (aka weB LOG- that is where the word blog comes from). but then i jumped on the bandwagon over a year ago. i thought about why it was that i started and it was really 4 fold:

1. i wanted people who wanted to know about maya road to meet me and get to know who i am and where i am coming from. i have a family. i have hobbies. i have a life outside of scrapbooking too! there is a human aspect to our company and this is one way to get out there and have people see who we are and what we stand for. i am just like all the other hundreds of thousands of scrapbookers out there - i hoard supplies, i use products from all types of companies, i just happen to own one with my sister (which is a total advantage when say, you decide that your baby boy needs some more boy embellishments so you all can make some).

2. i want people to understand what we struggle with and enjoy as a small business. there is so much to think about and this sort of thing isn't something you jump into easily for a lot of people.

3. and finally, i have come to accept that this is a way to journal like i haven't done since i was in high school. albeit a much more public forum, but i was looking back at my posts and i can visually see how my own evolution into who i am today and who maya road is today has taken place. i can see when we annouced that we were having a baby to finding out it was a boy to the 15 lb baby noah i have now. it really is really cool to see it all in one place - my thoughts, my photos, my feelings. and i do plan on printing out my blog and putting it in an album as a journal for myself b/c it is so easy to forget things - little things that i want to remember a year from now.

so well, i will continue to blog - doesn't matter if 100 people read it or i read my blog alone. it has become sort of an extension of who i am and what i do.

PS - don't forget about my RAK in the last post, i keep putting more and more things in the cigar box so post if you want to win!

a great day...

oy, i have a massive headache right now but it is a good one - i think i got it from this:

we lost today 3-1 and i had to play the whole game in 90F heat but i have so missed the art of the game.

soccer is ironically one of my hobbies to get away from the world of scrapbooking - LOL. i like to mix it up with the boys and girls and i don't mind coming away with scratches, bruises or jammed fingers.

but the headache is from 90 mins of exercise for a body that hasn't done that since last october. but it really feels good to get back into the game and getting back into the routinue of my sunday afternoons.

as i was doing that, noah was out meeting and greeting all the players:

i need to find him a green/white jersey to wear to cheer us on!

and finally my RAK for this week - check it out:

it is literally a gaggle of MR stuff. some old stuff, some new stuff (even some ribbons in colors we have not released before b/c we made them as samples!) there are ribbons, twill, chippies, sheers, photo corners, stamps and more in this cigar box that you can alter! my only requirement for this RAK is for you tell me - what maya road product puzzles you or do you need some ideas on how to use them? i ask this b/c we are always trying to make sure we make our newsletters more informative. so what would you like to learn how to use?

post here until next wednesday to win this cigar box of stuff! as i said before, i would also be happy to do a LO for you (or if you want just an embellishment of some sort for your page - your call). m ake sure you don't post anon so we can find you!

oh yeah, my DH has upped the ante on my use my stuff challenge. he said if i can do 100 LOs without buying stuff, i can treat myself to the spa and also buy more stuff. or if i don't make it to 100 LOs, then he gets an infinite G35 (fat chance). i might have to take him up on this offer but with certain rules in place though (like if someone sends me something, then i didn't buy it LOL)

have a great rest of the weekend!

psssttt...

...i haven't forgotten about the RAK - things have been busy this weekend - i have been working on orders like mad, trying to spend some time with david and noah and tomorrow starts my soccer season which i am TOTALLY giddy about!

i have also gotten very efficient with my LO skills - LOL - i have done 15 layouts and 1 mini album (which i am counting as 4 layouts) to get to my target of 25 LOs before i buy anything! it is funny though how i suddenly start to subconsciously want to BUY STUFF! we were at a walgreen's today and i picked up a set of cool vinyl letters (used for those cheesy science projects i did as a kid) that i thought would be cool but thankfully right before we checked out, i remembered I HADN'T DONE ALL MY LAYOUTS YET with my as is stuff! ACK! so i put it back! that is scary that i was even subconsciously trying to buy stuff!

but i have to confess, i did get some serious new goodies in the mail today from Ranjini from Scrapologie (http://www.scrapologie.com/) - i got my hands on one of her newest kits and it is AMAZING as usual. and i am going to allow myself to play with the kit tomorrow since i should be done with my other LOs by then (yay)! be sure to check out her blog (http://www.scrapologie.blogs.com/) to see what i come up with!


the rak is almost done being put together! i actually will have a small gaggle of MR stuff - new and old to give away - just need to get a picture of the goods which i will do after my soccer game tomorrow!

thankfulness...

well it looks like i will have to wait til this weekend to post a new RAK - sorry! things are crazy busy during the week and since my baby's sitter just had her own baby, noah is hanging out with me for a bit before he goes back to being watched during the day. it isn't that i mind - we have fun chillin' at the office, going to visit the W/H, etc - i know my baby won't be a baby forever!

i did this LO last night at 1 am - my 15 min layout. after my 5 LOs from this weekend, I have decided i will do 25 layouts before i buy anything else b/c I DON'T NEED IT! i know that must be a no-no to say especially when you own your own SBing company but that is the reality in my life right now! but i expect that this challenge will inspire me to create more and buy less and also to be more creative with what i have!

speaking of haves, i briefly mentioned that you can't please everyone all the time. this has been an interesting week for me. see i deal with mostly all complaints (and compliments) for MR - and you know what, i DO take complaints personally. but people need to remember that we all are only HUMAN. if i forgot to acknowledge someone at a show, it is b/c i was just having an off moment. if i didn't get to an email, it might be b/c i have 300 in my inbox at the moment.

we had one person rip me a new one for a product issue which i tried to resolve by offering them something which we did have in stock and then we asked for a picture to show the factory.

boy did that set this person off. we ask for pictures NOT because we don't believe there is a problem but how do you deal with a problem at a factory a half a world away but to send pictures. i can't show them the issue if you don't send me pictures. i even went as far as to offer one of my very own things (out of my personal MR stash) to replace for them but it wasn't enough b/c we are sold out of that item. i will admit, i stewed about it for about 2 days b/c that is how i am but i got over it. there is too much goodness and good people in life to worry about stuff like that. and in the end, you really can't please everyone.

so onto the good stuff. the reason i love this time of year is the sales on school supplies. ahhh who would have known that school supplies would lead to a career of scrapbooking but it makes sense, no? i can remember buying 200 count packs of lined notebook paper for $0.25! we kept a stash of like 10 packs in our closet. i used to LOVE to carry around lined paper in my purse " just in case" i needed it - it was a sickness - i know.

nowadays, i keep an eye out for school supplies sales around this time of year b/c my DH and I choose to support samartian's purse . it is an organization that donates shoe boxes of toys, candy, soap and school supplies to those less fortunate around the world. we have done this for the last 5 years now.

this past weekend, i hooked us up at the target dollar spot with the 75% off clearance! i got stickers, gel pens, etc. my shoe boxes are all starting to come together! this year i am hoping we can get 30 shoe boxes together and we will put personal notes and a photograph in each one (thanks to heather m. for letting me know that the kiddos that receive the boxes love the notes!). this is a tradition we want to pass onto noah - to make sure he knows how fortunate he is to have all the things he does have. it is so easy to concentrate on the negative when we all should display an attitude of gratitude.

so instead of concentrating on the negative stuff, i am CHOOSING to focus my energies on the good stuff. b/c in the end that is really truly what matters most.

a quick update...

... boy, you take a vacation and come back to chaos! i am not a chaos person (well my house is but i am not) - i like to be in control of things and when you are gone for a bit, chaos greets you when you come back! but the vacation was really nice. i enjoyed it. noah enjoyed it. david too! it was good to get some fresh cool air and just chill...

i have lots more to say about life, biz and the fact that you can't please everyone all the time (and my RAK too!) but it is close to 1 am to i need to head to bed!

but here was my last LO i did while away:

i did it...

i am off to bed but i did my 5 LOs - only got 4 scanned and i have a flight to catch in 6 hours so more later...

chillin'

we are having a great time in NM - today is noah's big shin dig with lots of extended relatives and family meeting him for the first time. as you can see, he is chillin' it old skool style in his finest velour duds - watch out - he might be break dancing soon!

and well i am done with 4 of the 5 pages i was going to make this weekend. here is one of my faves of noah and my mom during her visit. it says "65 years, 970 miles and 1 heart full of love" is all that separates the two.

the pages are coming fast and furious but i am running out of patterned paper bits to use! i did manage to try out our new rubons and ribbons. that is what i love about our stuff- you can match it to so many different other companies out there or make it to match what you want it to.

getting off the hamster wheel.

deb mentioned in her last post that MR and the trade show scedule makes us like hamsters on a wheel - ain't that the truth. but we talked about things this past month and next year and the remainder of this year, we are going to be revamping how we do things. why? b/c our babies are only babies once. we don't want to regret spending more time with them. as much as we love the business and MR, we love our families more and we need to learn to moderate.

i can say that deb and i are very ambitious people when it comes to work and life. i was just thinking that a couple of labor days ago, i was ambitious with my running schedule so during one labor day, i ran 9.3 miles (15k) at 4:30 am and then i ran a 15k labor day race that was in the dallas heat (close to 100F) and i managed to place second in my age group. yeah i know, i was crazy. but that is how things are with MR now. i have channeled that energy into 12 hour days around noah - staying up til 2-3 am sometimes. we want our company to grow and succeed but we have discussed making sure we stay healthy with the other aspects of our lives...

and right now, i am taking a couple of days off for labor day. i am only checking emails on/off but i know i have to physically remove myself to make myself stop working. and it is good for me and for noah and for david. i even made a page tonight while noah was napping with my limited supplies (but i can't seem to get the scanner to work so i will photograph it for you tomorrow). i feel refreshed today after being out of the office for a day. i actually got to run for about 20 mins (and that hurt in this altitude) as i anticipate my soccer season starting up again in a mere 10 days. and NEXT YEAR we are going on vacation - but being who i am i think a nice maui marathon vacation might be in the cards (smile)...

anyhow, i am off to chill with noah and to do a couple more pages.

oh yes, the winner of my RAK is Heather R! congrats! email me at info@mayaroad.com

i will post a labor day rak soon but this one will have another twist! you will get some MR goodies and *i* will personally make a page for you with photos you send me with some other MR goodies. LOL.